Environmental activists are going after Apple because there's a chance of doing something about it.
By _far_ the worst polluter in China is the Chinese government. Nothing a thousand Apples and a thousand Wal-marts could do would ever compete with what state industry and military has done and continues to do there.
I think a really, really important thing to understand is this: the ideal amount of pollution in a given area is not zero.
Pollution of some kind is the price of progress. People like beautiful clean lakes. People also like paper and food.
The goal is always to find the tradeoff of "as much progress as we want" for "as little pollution as we're willing to pay to mitigate". It's always possible to reduce polution in a variety of ways: - slow progress - improve the process to be inherently less polluting - research and implement polution mitigatino strategies
All of these either reduce peoples standard of living directly (i.e. slowing progress) or indirectly, by increasing costs.
Each region of the earth must choose its priorities according to its preferences. There are a lot of people in China who are experiencing prosperity and a life different than that of their ancestors.. and this excites them. And they are willing to pay _some_ cost of increased pollution.
You and I may not be willing to make that same tradeoff, or you and I see only the pollution they have but not what they're buying with it, and from our positions of 1st-world priviledge and with 150 years of iterating on balancing industrialization with ecology, we are ignoring the fact that people in China want our comfort and prosperity as badly as our ancestors did.
The evil here is not some objective measurement of pollution that says "Apple's factories pollute too much for our Sierra Club Standards", but that the Chinese people aren't necessarily ok with the "deal" they're getting.
In the USA this happens, and in China to a much larger extent, the government, even when it isn't the direct polluter, indemnifies local businesses from repercussions when they polute. This means that even if the affected people would be fine with higher costs or less luxury because they'd rather have _safe_ water (not even pretty or nice smelling water!), that choice isn't available to them.
In any case, the main points I wanted to make here are: - non-pollution is at odds with efficient and cheap production - different people at different stages of the progress treadmill will anneal around different tradeoff levels. And these will of course change over time. - What Apple is doing is not intrinsically good or evil unless it is violating the expressed desires of the people affected. If they _want_ a 1% cancer rate because for the first time in 6000 years, people in that region can do something other than subsistance farm, it's inappropriate to overlay your wealthy-western values framework over their choices..
Sometimes it's hard to know what ends up being useful in advance. IBM and Microsoft both have large departments that are simply working on interesting, unsolved problems.
I am unable to find a similar body of material from Apple. When I type "Research" in the main search box on apple.com, I get many hits from iTunes about songs and television programs.
Searching for "Apple Research Labs" using a proper search engine, I find links to shuttered efforts. These are interesting reading in and of themselves. I've read previously that Apple had a rich legacy of HCI research, and clearly less successful products like the Newton had a fair bit of groundbreaking work that went into them.
Note that there is a spectrum of viewpoints between libertarian and voluntaryist-anarchist.
The main point is that say, voluntaryists seek to acheive a stateless society by persuasion and education. Hopping over to somalia where you've got a non-trivial portion of the population beleiving that killing non-muslim-enough folks is just dandy doesn't seem like fertile soil for that kind of experiment.
Somalia is actually divided up into several regions, with much of the nasty fighting happening towards the south. Further north you get the less "exciting" stuff and there's been a fair bit of prosperity (read the PDF).
After a bit of reading, I have to admit that I was intrigued at the idea. The Xeer "system" sounds quite interesting and unlike anything I've ever heard discussed in poly sci classes. The main problem is that to the extent these systems work, they do so, IMO, in large part due to ideological homogenity. For that matter, much of what made the original USA work was the larger degree of ideological homogenity present then than now.
I cannot imagine that if I walked into Somalia and said "hey! I think your ancient system of non-state justice is great!" they'd say anything other than "sod off, imperialist" (first in my language, then in 4 of their own that I have no hope of ever understanding)
So, circling back to the original troll.. the PDF link is the real interesting point here. Given an identical society with and without government, in a people group that has had a history of relative anarchism.. the individual (and the society ) actually prospers after a corrupt government is removed and anarchy is restored.
The paper does't claim that anarchy is categorically better than government, but it does claim (and demonstrates) that _some_ governments are worse than some anarchies. I think that's an interesting and promising result.
The PDF results really are interesting. Somalia has the cheapest and highest quality cell phone calls in Africa. There are at least 4 different electricity providers available in one city, with pricing models like "per light bulb".
Without data on what a group of canonical American libertarians & voluntaryists might do if they actually had a wide-spread state-free society to play in, it's hard to credibly suggest that it would instantly be somalia. For one thing, the average web developer has no business trying to do subsistence farming, doesn't have a strong extended family, etc.
I think the cheif problem with an American-libertarian breakaway society would be the urge of its members to seek huge profits doing things Uncle Sam gets mad over... off-shore gambling, drug production, copyright violation, etc.
A group of people that attempt to break away from the US really don't have a viable shot at succeeding until they can credibly threaten to detonate a nuclear weapon in the US mainland -- in DC or NYC or someplace like that.
Once that capability is beleived (by uncle sam) to exist, such a break-away non-state can actually say "leave us alone" and have it stick.
I don't think you have an actual defense or justification for rioting as I've defined it.
If people are mad at the government, why don't they go attack _government_ buildings and workers?
Have the populace at large ever rallied in support of rioters?
At least Timothy McVeigh and the IRS guy attacked federal buildings instead of random neighbors. Say what you want about their motivations and their plans, but they were at least somewhat discriminating about what and who they were hurting.
Rioters are worse than terrorists. Terrorists at least have a political goal.
I'm somewhere between a libertarian and a full-on anarchist. Rioters violate the non-aggression principle. They initiate harm against people and property who are innocent, and completley unrelated to whatever legitimate greivance the rioters may hold.
A group of "people" who are randomly destroying people and property have voluntarily renounced their humanity. They should be given the starkest of terms: immediately cease or immediately die.
I would support executing rioters in the street. Procedures should be developed to give non-rioting bystanders or those who have not yet delved into total barbarism a chance to escape or assume a non-threatening position. Anyone who does not lay down and wait to be processed should be executed shortly thereafter.
The size of the illegal market will also continue to increase, as more things will become illegal.
But heck, I like using cash when I'm _not_ doing anything knowingly illegal. Sometimes you just want to fork over some money and be anonymous. No, I don't want you to add this item to my profile. No, I don't want to sign anything. No, I don't want to transfer enough of my identity to you that you can buy things "on my behalf" after your shfit ends. No, you can't have my phone number. No, you can't have my zip code. No, I don't have email. Give me my fucking $item and stop asking questions.
Every occupation wants state-backed occupational licensure. They _tell_ you it is for reasons like
- only a licensed plumber has taken the rigorous training required to understand that you don't want to drink fecal matter - only a licensed electrician has taken the rigorous training required to understand that you don't want to lick 2 or more live electrical conductors at once - only a licensed pharmacist has taken the rigorous training required to understand that you do not take all of the pills in the bottle at once - only a licensed lawyer has taken the rigorous training required to understand that.. well wait a minute.. Oh right, that the way to to win cases is to not go to trial but to settle... and failing that, to play golf with the Judge prior to the hearing.
Occupational Licensure is incumbent protection. It's a racket, it drives up wages artificially, and I don't see that it has any impact at all on quality of services delivered.
There are no lawyers anywhere in the world who are worried that someone might get "bad legal advice" from this software. But the legions of folks who got through the state bar and do unintersting mundane tasks like real estate purchase agreements, wills, adoptions, etc, don't want their gravy train to be impacted.
What's a lawyer to do? Write some laws, of course.
All you need to know about the state, the law, and the lawyers is that Jesus came to this world to tell a bunch of lawyers that they were ruining everything. He didn't have anything bad to say about the romans who actually invaded and tortured people. He was pissed off at the lawyers.
4) Grow up. Those gen-ed courses are actually some of the best parts of college. I am a geek to the core, but I loved discussing Descartes' meditations, studying economics, learning how the eye communicates images to the brain, and debugging why various wars started. If you think you can survive in the world knowing only what is in the computer you will be unable to accurately measure the world around you and efficiently apply what you have learned to your field. You won't be young forever so at some point you will wake-up and realize you aren't the best of the best of the best anymore, and you will want your niche in the real world. Computers are a tool - a means. True success requires more than just the means (your C.S.) to fulfill.
I don't think the OP posits that all he needs to know is how to program. I think he (rightfully) concludes that the bullshit they spew in bullshit class isn't going to enrich him for a variety of reasons.
It's not that none of those things are interesting or that they aren't interesting to him. It's just that a typical state 4 year program isn't the venue that makes them interesting.
One reason I picked the uni I did was becasue the CompE program had only 18 hours that weren't math/sci/physics. And most people take 5 years to complete the program.
Well, 2 years in and I was pulling my hair out trying to keep my GPA high in EE classes whilst simultaneously trying to spend my time geeking on real stuff and mingling with the opposite sex.
So I "dropped down" to a double major in Maths and CS and suddenly many of the gen-Ed requirements became due.
God, what an awful fucking waste that was. There were a few classes that were interesting and I remember certain bits of trivia from them, mostly history related. But hell, I could have just picked up the books, and listened to the handful of engaging lectures by auditing a class later in life.
Generally, the total lack of interesting people or conversations in my english courses, as well as the inane emotionalism in general, made me hate it all. My college experience made me much more disgusted with people in general than even being a nerd in highschool did. Here, I thought, were supposed to be the brighter folks who were serious. Not so.
If i had had an econ course that talked Austrian economics; if I had had a philosophy or poly sci course that discussed minarchism or Ayn Rand...now THAT would have been interesting. If i had had even ONE literature course that was Heinlein instead of typical english teacher horseshit...
But no.. i had to wait until i was miles away from school to actually re-learn to enjoy reading fiction, and to immerse myself in interesting ethical and "social science" topics.
I've had considerably more interesting conversations about history, politics, and economics on _Facebook_ than I ever had in college.
Infact, reflecting upon all of the things I've learned since K-12 and university, I feel quite cheated, to be honest. It's not that I expect that in 16 years I can be taught everything. It's that I got such a bullshit slanted view of the truth and of what was important masquerading as education.
That so many of these dimwits talk about how they shape minds is frankly terrifying. The results speak for themselves.
The OP may be correct to treat the whole affair largely as a hurdle to clear so he can have a better shot at getting out of the McJob category.
I'd like to beleive there was a government that would protect my rights as its first and only priority and functoin. But so far, no such thing has existed in world history.
And so one wonders, "is the baby the same as the bathwater"?
As I said elsewhere, I am somewhere between a libertarian and a voluntaryist. If i were convinced that an ethical state were possible, I'd be a libertarian. But I'm no longer convinced the state can exist morally.
The USA was the most exciting experiment in limited or self government that had been tried at that point in history. I'm not aware of a society that has done a better job since. But suppose that the 1700s model of the USA was not the endpoint on the gradient of prosperity and individual rights, but merely as far as we've gone thus far? What if there is something better waiting ahead?
In other words, the lack of existance of a well known, successful anarchy doesn't preclude one from ever existing. And anarchy isn't my goal per se, my goal is more liberty.
You're being a bit disingenuous here. "my ideas" are not that we live in huts by ourselves (although that would almost certainly be an _ethical_ improvement from today, in terms of the absense of coercion and denial of rights to individuals)
There are still people who manage to live without the assistance of others or participation in society, inspite of the very real societal obstalces to doing so you've mentioned. So, I have to disagree with your comments here.
Again, I am not proposing a return to hunter gatherer. I was illustrating the nature of coercion and providing concrete pictures of non-coercive interactions. I beleive there are non-coercive models for society that are compatible with something more resembling modern life, but rather than have my point rest on what is imagined, it is easier to describe it based on what has already been.
Never-the-less, it's much easier for me to legally get good internet than a good blow job.
If you recognize that laws against prostitution are bad government do you also recognize that the reason we have sole-provider problems in some areas for internet service are _also_ bad government?
Usually, the fix for bad government is not more government..
I am not convinced the founders would support net neutrality.
Also, the USPS doesn't deliver mail everywhere in the nation. In many small towns and certainly rural areas you pick your own mail up somewhere else, at a central location. Ironically, UPS and Fedex deliver mail to the door in these locations -- presumably profitably.
Translation: I think it would be way cool if all of the lazy unproductive people would starve to death and/or die from lack of health care so that all of us hyper-productive individualist heros could have more cool toys to play with.
Nonsense. I think that would be tragic.
But should that remain an accurate description of them or their behavior, absent voluntary charity, that would certainly be the _just_ outcome.
And any other outcome that relied on non-voluntary action would be, in aggregate, less just and less ethical.
Yet people used to be able to satisfy their needs for food, shelter, and clothing without government and without me. And some can even do it without any other humans around at all.
I reject the premise that I am coercing a barista at starbucks. SHE decides what she wants and how to acheive it. Whether I show up there, that day, or EVER, the government will still demand restitution from her via taxation, and the ONLY way she can do that is to do something for somebody that will give her dollars in exchange.
She could be a self sufficient woman living in a hut somewhere. And the government would demand she pay taxes on something or other. And for that reason only would she be required to transact with others.. to somehow have a way to get dollars, the only thing that will satisfy the government.
The government is the coercive entity in the picture.. in every picture. Coercion is its nature.
Conversely, with no government, if she didn't feel like showing up to work, she'd have no need of government paper, and no _coercive_ reason to show up to work. If she didn't like being a barista more than any other consideration in her life (like not having to build her own house and hunt her own food), she and I would never meet.
Humans do not continue to live by default -- food, clothing, and shelter do not appear for us out of thin air. We must exert effort in our lives to secure our wants and needs. That isn't the coercion of man on man or state on man.
that would be wonderful. It shouldn't exist at all, naturally, but breaking it up would be a fine start:)
Without conceding your overall point, I'll entertain that if you want to say that the feds should regulate trunks or long-haul links, you might have an argument. That argument wouldn't however extend to local ISP service, which is what we're talking about here.
Re: what some states would allow: absolutely. People come in at all different levels on the taxonomy of wants and needs. If you're worrying about how much radiation your phone puts out, you're not one of the farmers in the rural dakotas who was bitterly clinging to his AMPS phone unti the day service ended, because that was the only thing he could count on to have service when he was 3 hills over the horizon and there was a bad accident in the field.
Any farmer would gladly trade "NO I FUCKING MEAN IT" levels of radiation, at least in emergency situations, if it was the difference between completing or not completing the call. That's something that just doesn't weigh on the minds of phone regulators in DC because they haven't been there.
If there are people who are willing to pay for a super-handset that can be used in all 50 states despite diverse laws and regulations, and there are not local government obstacles to building/selling such a device, somebody will make it.
As far as owning parts of the spectrum and FCC involvement: I'm not convinced the current way this works is optimal, but I'm not well read enough on it to suggest one of the superior-sounding alternatives I came across.
It's impossible for me to fellate myself, and worse than there being only one organization I can go to to receive this service, there is NO organization in my area that can do this for me.
Presumably, the government should step in and regulate/provide this service for me.
You're absolutely right that I rely on your labor for the wonderful standard of living that I have. Thank you.
You're absolutely wrong that I have _coerced you_ into providing it. If you feel that I haven't compensated you for everything you've ever done for me, I apologize, and I'd like to talk so we can resolve this.
People can and do cooperate and build off of the labor of each other while still engaging in purely voluntary transactions.
That is the sole ethical model of human interaction - voluntaryism.
For any other model of interaction, there is an element of coercion involved. There's a hidden gun just around the corner.
Your point about the _practice_ of those who are recognized to be slaves vs. how most of us live is of course accurate.
But the frustrating thing about libertarians is that we are not pragmatists, we deal in principle and ideology. Someone who is held against their will, made to do tasks they do not wash to do, and who is only beaten or raped once a year certainly has it better than someone who is held against their will, made to do tasks they do not wish to do, but who is raped every hour.
We agree that both are slaves, even though their treatment and perhaps the magnitude of their suffering differs.
What's your answer to the question of "the tale of the slave?"
What makes us not slaves? The infrequency of our rapes?
Incidentally, if you are curious about one an-cap viewpoint on the ethics of parenting and children, of course, Murray Rothbard's "The Ethics of Liberty" is a fantastic starting point. You can find the text online.
I hope you'll take the time to read and think about the link provided. Please also note that I did not denigrate you or your beleifs in my response, a courtesy you did not grant to the OP.
Disclosure: I'm somewhere between a libertarian and voluntaryist, and I'm against net neutrality laws/regulations.
But I'm happy to see this for a few reasons.
1) the idea of federal supremecy really rubs me the wrong way. States and municipalities, so long as they are not violating incorporated individual protections, should do whatever they like and tell uncle sam to fuck off. This idea that every single detail of our lives has to be managed from DC and has to be the same for everybody everywhere is really, really stupid and is very counter to the original vision of America.
2) If some people want something like net neutrality specifically, not doing it at the federal level is a great approach 2a) I don't think the FCC really has any constitutional right to exist, but that ship sailed a long time ago. The idea that it has the power to impose and enforce net neutrality regulatoins is dubious at best. 2b) I don't see that _all_ internet businesses eveyrwhere should play by arbitrary rules decided in DC. You could certainly envision high-density municipal internet services being provisiioned, used, and regulated differently than RRTA farmers in the dakotas. Let's let the people decide what they want at a _local_ level, and make businesses put up with it. 2c) incidentally, having different rules and regulatinos for every little locality PROMOTES small businesses and regional operators, and dissuades mega-corps who want to push out local incumbents with federal power
Now, I used to live in seattle and hated the politics of that whole festering sore of hippie socialists. But, I long for the idea that their right of supreme self-determination should trump and invalidate whatever Uncle Sam has to say about it.
I recognize all of the rights of mealworms which they fought and secured for themselves by defeating the British.
That is to say, none.
When they make a convicing argument that they have rights and when they are able to assert themselves to that end, I'll listen.
The reason I don't _personally_ torture animals that appear to have more in common with me than other life (like the grass in my yard, which i mow with reluctant impunity) is because I don't feel good doing it, and the Tale of the Jewish Zombie (aka the Bible) tells me I am to be a proper steward of the life God has put on the Earth.
But absent some external moral standard (like a religious beleif), I find nothing compelling to suggest that non-humans have any "rights" at all.
Unpopular as it is, I'd advocate for the repeal of _all_ animal "cruelty" laws. The purpose of government is to allegedly protect the rights of individuals; animals don't have rights, therefore, the extent to which the law discusses animals should be limited to _property crime_ issues.
I understand that makes me a "speciesist". I'm fine with that, and as I've illustrated above, I have religious and non-religious arguments for why I'm ok with that.
If Michael Vick tortures _your_ dog, he should go to jail for destruction of your property. If he tortures _his_ dog, he's just a neighbor with a habit I find disgusting.
(PS: Buy Visual Studio LightSwitch when it comes out! It rocks!)
I will not comment on the accuracy of what is in the ars article, other than to say: I know the answers to some of the questions they are worried about, and the answers do not worry me and shouldn't worry you either (unless you're a competing non-MS technology, perhaps:))
Regarding your post: I don't see how you'd conclude that.net is going anywhere from the article you supposedly read.
First and foremost, you would need to be specific about what you mean by ".net" for your statement to even make sense. Are you claiming that C#, the language, is on an EOL path? Or the.NET runtime will no longer be a supported way of writing userland apps?
Your claim that we intentionally obsolete developer technologies as some sort of money making scheme is hillarious. Have you worked in the commercial software industry before? Let me explain how it works.
1) we spend a ginormous amount of money paying engineers to make something that we hope developers use. 2) we figure out if its something we can even charge money for, or if we need to give it away so more people will develop for our huge money making platforms (Windows, SQL, Office, Sharepoint) 3) when we have something we can give away / sell for a pittance, we start doing so 4) this is when we might actually start getting money for our efforts.
Now then, if our strategy was to make money at any cost, you'd think that we'd fire all of the engineers and keep selling licenses at the same price indefinitely.
But as you've noted, our engineering staff moves on to new things and eventually the old things get phased out.
We don't start working on new platforms because we need to figure out how to get more money out of existing customers. We work on new platforms because we think they'll be better than the old ones; that customers will like them more; that they'll provide more value to everyone. There are all kinds of features and products we'd LIKE to put out there in the real world but they all cost us more money to do. And as you've noted, everything we release causes someone to get upset if we want to stop supporting years later. For every one of these developer technologies we ship, we end up supporting it for years after we're not selling it (and thus not getting new revenue). Our support life cycle is a hell of a lot longer than Apples, or any of the for-pay Linux distros, for instance.
Finally, regarding what a huge revenue stream deveopers tools are for us... I've never come across anyone in Windows or Office who is worried their project is going to be killed and their staff moved onto a _real_ money making project like the F# compiler:)
Sure, DevDiv does great revenue compared to a lot of entire companies. But look who we're competing against. I'm not sure we've ever sold 300 million seats ever, counting everything we do. Windows does that _every release_.
(nothing against the F# compiler guys. I just picked something:))
I claimed that _I_ was happy with the care my family has received. Are you going to tell me I was wrong or lying when I said that? Really?
I also claimed that premature infants receive better care (and outcomes) in the US than in other countries. Are you going to attempt to contradict that?
Your points about me already bankrolling everyone else's care are roughly accurate. Which is I why I proposed ending walkin ER care. I'm tired of paying what I already do, and I don't want you making it worse.
Turning away people who cannot pay would be JUST, not evil. If people want charity, they should go to church and make great friends. If they want to steal from me, they better have plenty of guns -- like the government does.
I'm not forcing you to do anything.
Calling someone an asshole isn't helpful. I'm telling you that you're evil so we can have a discussion about your principles and values (which you seem to lack). Happily supporting the financial slavery of your neighbors is, I would say, evil. Since you appear to support just that, I'd say my criticisms are not hyperbole nor insult; they are an accusation you are welcome to refute.
Also, its very tiring to hear about how fox news and corporations are controlling me. I don't even have a TV, and my opinions of what powers corporations should have probably aren't going to win me any friends amongst corporatist America.
You are _assuming_ or _casting_ viewpoints and motivations on me which are incorrect.
It's very easy for me to explain why i prefer the curent system to a more socialized one. I'll break it down for you.
In any system of health care, there will be rationing; the needs of the ill will always be greater than the supply of care. How should the available care then be distributed?
Personally, I think it should be distributed to those who are willing to pay for it. Like me. Now, unfortuneately, we have all of this government and insurance nonsense screwing all of that up, so what I want only exists in certain corners of the overall health marketplace. Never-the-less, I've been satisfied thus far with my treatment.
However, with a move to "universal care" or greater government involvement, the rationing function tends to be less dominated by my money and more dominated by government bullshit or other arbitrary metrics. And I don't like that because it is coercive, it is arbitrary, and it punishes virtue and value instead of rewarding it.
Let me be perfectly clear: its not "his" fault if a guy breaks his leg and loses his job and has no insurance.
But isn't my fault either. And its not his former employers fault, it's not your fault, its not "the governments fault", etc etc.
As heartless as it is, the least amount of aggregate evil in society is when we dont steal from EVERYBODY to help one guy who had hard luck. Stealing is still stealing, even when millions of neighbors agree that its a fine thing to do. They're wrong. You're wrong.
But I've been down this road with you before. You have no principles, so you refuse to understand what I am saying. You think its fine for the government to go around assassinating people; you naturally think widespread theft is fine.
Don't ever talk to anyone about ethics or morality again until you can explain why stealing from me to pay for your care is just. I don't care if that's what's already happening some of the time. If you want to support the growth or solidification of that tenet of how health care should be distributed, the onus is on _you_ to justify the morailty of it.
Start with some principles and make an argument -- calling me an ignorant asshole over and over doesn't impress anyone.
before claiming i am ignorant you should, at minimum, cite at least one thing i've claimed that is inaccurate.
I don't doubt that there are many people in the US who are unhappy with what they are receiving and what they are paying. But I'm not one of them. You plan on making me suffer further on account of someone else. That's because you're evil.
You have simply insulted me, over and over. I've made some claims about you that aren't necessarily insulting, although if someone said them about me, i'd be insulted. But you haven't addressed or attempted to refute them.
you cannot talk about ethics or principles without even stating what yours are, much less demonstrating any at any point.
I also don't see how my statement regarding a preference for principles over outcomes reflects brainwashing or stupidity. Perhaps you could explain it? Or is it the case that you are too busy typing "asshole" to think about what I might have meant?
My health care is kick ass and I've never had a problem with it. I've never had to wait to get whatever I like.
When my twins were born at 26 weeks I was very happy to be in the USA where even my small town of 100,000 people has a level 3 NICU.. and note that despite the CDC paper about infant mortality in the USA, _premature babies_ in the USA have better outcomes than anywhere else.
It's all very well and good for the Danish that you claim they are happy and pay less. Like I said - move there if you find it superior. It should be a pareto improvement for both of us: you get what you want, I get what I want (freedom from your bullshit)
Naturally, you don't address any of my points about ethics vs. consequentialism. The measure of "live longer and pay less" is not only problematic but is frankly irrelevant.
I am not ultimately concerned with metrics or outcomes, I am concerned with principles and ethics. Based on this and our previous interactions, you have none and so you find this difficult to understand.
Have you ever met a libertarian who has done this? Who has tried to receive "free" emergency room care?
I never have.
I've actually been to denmark. Have you? _I_ wasn't happier there.
You can move to Denmark if you want to. Why are you insistent on fucking up _here_ ? If there is already a place that you like more than here, why not go there?
For me, there IS no place I'd rather be. People like you are making here worse _all the time_. Please stop!
Now then, there is a very simple answer to the freeloader problem: stop providing ER care. Yes, I am absolutely fine if there is no law requireing ER's to treat people. If you believe that people will just lay on the street dying, so be it. I'm fine with that to. I don't think that's what will actually happen, but I feel that is a more just outcome than what you are proposing.
All Compulsion is always evil, all of the time. You obviously disagree, but we should just be clear about the roots of our disagreement. I beleive voluntaryism is the only ethical approach, and the consequences of that are what they are. You beleive that if some particular outcome is desirable, it is fine to abandon any principle in pursuit of that.
Slashdot Mirror
Environmental activists are going after Apple because there's a chance of doing something about it.
By _far_ the worst polluter in China is the Chinese government. Nothing a thousand Apples and a thousand Wal-marts could do would ever compete with what state industry and military has done and continues to do there.
I think a really, really important thing to understand is this: the ideal amount of pollution in a given area is not zero.
Pollution of some kind is the price of progress. People like beautiful clean lakes. People also like paper and food.
The goal is always to find the tradeoff of "as much progress as we want" for "as little pollution as we're willing to pay to mitigate". It's always possible to reduce polution in a variety of ways:
- slow progress
- improve the process to be inherently less polluting
- research and implement polution mitigatino strategies
All of these either reduce peoples standard of living directly (i.e. slowing progress) or indirectly, by increasing costs.
Each region of the earth must choose its priorities according to its preferences. There are a lot of people in China who are experiencing prosperity and a life different than that of their ancestors.. and this excites them. And they are willing to pay _some_ cost of increased pollution.
You and I may not be willing to make that same tradeoff, or you and I see only the pollution they have but not what they're buying with it, and from our positions of 1st-world priviledge and with 150 years of iterating on balancing industrialization with ecology, we are ignoring the fact that people in China want our comfort and prosperity as badly as our ancestors did.
The evil here is not some objective measurement of pollution that says "Apple's factories pollute too much for our Sierra Club Standards", but that the Chinese people aren't necessarily ok with the "deal" they're getting.
In the USA this happens, and in China to a much larger extent, the government, even when it isn't the direct polluter, indemnifies local businesses from repercussions when they polute. This means that even if the affected people would be fine with higher costs or less luxury because they'd rather have _safe_ water (not even pretty or nice smelling water!), that choice isn't available to them.
In any case, the main points I wanted to make here are:
- non-pollution is at odds with efficient and cheap production
- different people at different stages of the progress treadmill will anneal around different tradeoff levels. And these will of course change over time.
- What Apple is doing is not intrinsically good or evil unless it is violating the expressed desires of the people affected. If they _want_ a 1% cancer rate because for the first time in 6000 years, people in that region can do something other than subsistance farm, it's inappropriate to overlay your wealthy-western values framework over their choices..
IBM and Microsoft do.
Sometimes it's hard to know what ends up being useful in advance. IBM and Microsoft both have large departments that are simply working on interesting, unsolved problems.
You should peruse some of the research topics, projects, papers, and technology transfers from MSR if you are unfamiliar with them.
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/about/techtransfer/default.aspx
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/research/default.aspx
I am unable to find a similar body of material from Apple. When I type "Research" in the main search box on apple.com, I get many hits from iTunes about songs and television programs.
Searching for "Apple Research Labs" using a proper search engine, I find links to shuttered efforts. These are interesting reading in and of themselves. I've read previously that Apple had a rich legacy of HCI research, and clearly less successful products like the Newton had a fair bit of groundbreaking work that went into them.
http://mambo.ucsc.edu/psl/apple.html
(no longer exists; link to apple.com dead)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Multimedia_Lab
(no longer exists)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Technology_Group
(no longer exists)
I'd appreciate some assistance in reading more about the novel, non-product research going on at Apple. Perhaps you can help?
Well, I get trolled with this often enough that I decided to do a little reading, and was actually fascinated by what I found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeer
and more interestingly:
http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf
(sorry for PDF link)
Note that there is a spectrum of viewpoints between libertarian and voluntaryist-anarchist.
The main point is that say, voluntaryists seek to acheive a stateless society by persuasion and education. Hopping over to somalia where you've got a non-trivial portion of the population beleiving that killing non-muslim-enough folks is just dandy doesn't seem like fertile soil for that kind of experiment.
Somalia is actually divided up into several regions, with much of the nasty fighting happening towards the south. Further north you get the less "exciting" stuff and there's been a fair bit of prosperity (read the PDF).
After a bit of reading, I have to admit that I was intrigued at the idea. The Xeer "system" sounds quite interesting and unlike anything I've ever heard discussed in poly sci classes. The main problem is that to the extent these systems work, they do so, IMO, in large part due to ideological homogenity. For that matter, much of what made the original USA work was the larger degree of ideological homogenity present then than now.
I cannot imagine that if I walked into Somalia and said "hey! I think your ancient system of non-state justice is great!" they'd say anything other than "sod off, imperialist" (first in my language, then in 4 of their own that I have no hope of ever understanding)
So, circling back to the original troll.. the PDF link is the real interesting point here. Given an identical society with and without government, in a people group that has had a history of relative anarchism.. the individual (and the society ) actually prospers after a corrupt government is removed and anarchy is restored.
The paper does't claim that anarchy is categorically better than government, but it does claim (and demonstrates) that _some_ governments are worse than some anarchies. I think that's an interesting and promising result.
The PDF results really are interesting. Somalia has the cheapest and highest quality cell phone calls in Africa. There are at least 4 different electricity providers available in one city, with pricing models like "per light bulb".
Without data on what a group of canonical American libertarians & voluntaryists might do if they actually had a wide-spread state-free society to play in, it's hard to credibly suggest that it would instantly be somalia. For one thing, the average web developer has no business trying to do subsistence farming, doesn't have a strong extended family, etc.
I think the cheif problem with an American-libertarian breakaway society would be the urge of its members to seek huge profits doing things Uncle Sam gets mad over... off-shore gambling, drug production, copyright violation, etc.
A group of people that attempt to break away from the US really don't have a viable shot at succeeding until they can credibly threaten to detonate a nuclear weapon in the US mainland -- in DC or NYC or someplace like that.
Once that capability is beleived (by uncle sam) to exist, such a break-away non-state can actually say "leave us alone" and have it stick.
Protesting != rioting.
I don't think you have an actual defense or justification for rioting as I've defined it.
If people are mad at the government, why don't they go attack _government_ buildings and workers?
Have the populace at large ever rallied in support of rioters?
At least Timothy McVeigh and the IRS guy attacked federal buildings instead of random neighbors. Say what you want about their motivations and their plans, but they were at least somewhat discriminating about what and who they were hurting.
Rioters are worse than terrorists. Terrorists at least have a political goal.
I'm somewhere between a libertarian and a full-on anarchist. Rioters violate the non-aggression principle. They initiate harm against people and property who are innocent, and completley unrelated to whatever legitimate greivance the rioters may hold.
A group of "people" who are randomly destroying people and property have voluntarily renounced their humanity. They should be given the starkest of terms: immediately cease or immediately die.
I would support executing rioters in the street. Procedures should be developed to give non-rioting bystanders or those who have not yet delved into total barbarism a chance to escape or assume a non-threatening position. Anyone who does not lay down and wait to be processed should be executed shortly thereafter.
The size of the illegal market will also continue to increase, as more things will become illegal.
But heck, I like using cash when I'm _not_ doing anything knowingly illegal. Sometimes you just want to fork over some money and be anonymous. No, I don't want you to add this item to my profile. No, I don't want to sign anything. No, I don't want to transfer enough of my identity to you that you can buy things "on my behalf" after your shfit ends. No, you can't have my phone number. No, you can't have my zip code. No, I don't have email. Give me my fucking $item and stop asking questions.
Every occupation wants state-backed occupational licensure. They _tell_ you it is for reasons like
- only a licensed plumber has taken the rigorous training required to understand that you don't want to drink fecal matter .. well wait a minute.. Oh right, that the way to to win cases is to not go to trial but to settle... and failing that, to play golf with the Judge prior to the hearing.
- only a licensed electrician has taken the rigorous training required to understand that you don't want to lick 2 or more live electrical conductors at once
- only a licensed pharmacist has taken the rigorous training required to understand that you do not take all of the pills in the bottle at once
- only a licensed lawyer has taken the rigorous training required to understand that
Occupational Licensure is incumbent protection. It's a racket, it drives up wages artificially, and I don't see that it has any impact at all on quality of services delivered.
There are no lawyers anywhere in the world who are worried that someone might get "bad legal advice" from this software. But the legions of folks who got through the state bar and do unintersting mundane tasks like real estate purchase agreements, wills, adoptions, etc, don't want their gravy train to be impacted.
What's a lawyer to do? Write some laws, of course.
All you need to know about the state, the law, and the lawyers is that Jesus came to this world to tell a bunch of lawyers that they were ruining everything. He didn't have anything bad to say about the romans who actually invaded and tortured people. He was pissed off at the lawyers.
I don't think the OP posits that all he needs to know is how to program. I think he (rightfully) concludes that the bullshit they spew in bullshit class isn't going to enrich him for a variety of reasons.
It's not that none of those things are interesting or that they aren't interesting to him. It's just that a typical state 4 year program isn't the venue that makes them interesting.
One reason I picked the uni I did was becasue the CompE program had only 18 hours that weren't math/sci/physics. And most people take 5 years to complete the program.
Well, 2 years in and I was pulling my hair out trying to keep my GPA high in EE classes whilst simultaneously trying to spend my time geeking on real stuff and mingling with the opposite sex.
So I "dropped down" to a double major in Maths and CS and suddenly many of the gen-Ed requirements became due.
God, what an awful fucking waste that was. There were a few classes that were interesting and I remember certain bits of trivia from them, mostly history related. But hell, I could have just picked up the books, and listened to the handful of engaging lectures by auditing a class later in life.
Generally, the total lack of interesting people or conversations in my english courses, as well as the inane emotionalism in general, made me hate it all. My college experience made me much more disgusted with people in general than even being a nerd in highschool did. Here, I thought, were supposed to be the brighter folks who were serious. Not so.
If i had had an econ course that talked Austrian economics; if I had had a philosophy or poly sci course that discussed minarchism or Ayn Rand...now THAT would have been interesting. If i had had even ONE literature course that was Heinlein instead of typical english teacher horseshit...
But no.. i had to wait until i was miles away from school to actually re-learn to enjoy reading fiction, and to immerse myself in interesting ethical and "social science" topics.
I've had considerably more interesting conversations about history, politics, and economics on _Facebook_ than I ever had in college.
Infact, reflecting upon all of the things I've learned since K-12 and university, I feel quite cheated, to be honest. It's not that I expect that in 16 years I can be taught everything. It's that I got such a bullshit slanted view of the truth and of what was important masquerading as education.
That so many of these dimwits talk about how they shape minds is frankly terrifying. The results speak for themselves.
The OP may be correct to treat the whole affair largely as a hurdle to clear so he can have a better shot at getting out of the McJob category.
I'd like to beleive there was a government that would protect my rights as its first and only priority and functoin. But so far, no such thing has existed in world history.
And so one wonders, "is the baby the same as the bathwater"?
As I said elsewhere, I am somewhere between a libertarian and a voluntaryist. If i were convinced that an ethical state were possible, I'd be a libertarian. But I'm no longer convinced the state can exist morally.
The USA was the most exciting experiment in limited or self government that had been tried at that point in history. I'm not aware of a society that has done a better job since. But suppose that the 1700s model of the USA was not the endpoint on the gradient of prosperity and individual rights, but merely as far as we've gone thus far? What if there is something better waiting ahead?
In other words, the lack of existance of a well known, successful anarchy doesn't preclude one from ever existing. And anarchy isn't my goal per se, my goal is more liberty.
You're being a bit disingenuous here. "my ideas" are not that we live in huts by ourselves (although that would almost certainly be an _ethical_ improvement from today, in terms of the absense of coercion and denial of rights to individuals)
There are still people who manage to live without the assistance of others or participation in society, inspite of the very real societal obstalces to doing so you've mentioned. So, I have to disagree with your comments here.
Again, I am not proposing a return to hunter gatherer. I was illustrating the nature of coercion and providing concrete pictures of non-coercive interactions. I beleive there are non-coercive models for society that are compatible with something more resembling modern life, but rather than have my point rest on what is imagined, it is easier to describe it based on what has already been.
Never-the-less, it's much easier for me to legally get good internet than a good blow job.
If you recognize that laws against prostitution are bad government do you also recognize that the reason we have sole-provider problems in some areas for internet service are _also_ bad government?
Usually, the fix for bad government is not more government..
I am not convinced the founders would support net neutrality.
Also, the USPS doesn't deliver mail everywhere in the nation. In many small towns and certainly rural areas you pick your own mail up somewhere else, at a central location. Ironically, UPS and Fedex deliver mail to the door in these locations -- presumably profitably.
Nonsense. I think that would be tragic.
But should that remain an accurate description of them or their behavior, absent voluntary charity, that would certainly be the _just_ outcome.
And any other outcome that relied on non-voluntary action would be, in aggregate, less just and less ethical.
Yet people used to be able to satisfy their needs for food, shelter, and clothing without government and without me. And some can even do it without any other humans around at all.
I reject the premise that I am coercing a barista at starbucks. SHE decides what she wants and how to acheive it. Whether I show up there, that day, or EVER, the government will still demand restitution from her via taxation, and the ONLY way she can do that is to do something for somebody that will give her dollars in exchange.
She could be a self sufficient woman living in a hut somewhere. And the government would demand she pay taxes on something or other. And for that reason only would she be required to transact with others.. to somehow have a way to get dollars, the only thing that will satisfy the government.
The government is the coercive entity in the picture.. in every picture. Coercion is its nature.
Conversely, with no government, if she didn't feel like showing up to work, she'd have no need of government paper, and no _coercive_ reason to show up to work. If she didn't like being a barista more than any other consideration in her life (like not having to build her own house and hunt her own food), she and I would never meet.
Humans do not continue to live by default -- food, clothing, and shelter do not appear for us out of thin air. We must exert effort in our lives to secure our wants and needs. That isn't the coercion of man on man or state on man.
Re: USPS
that would be wonderful. It shouldn't exist at all, naturally, but breaking it up would be a fine start :)
Without conceding your overall point, I'll entertain that if you want to say that the feds should regulate trunks or long-haul links, you might have an argument. That argument wouldn't however extend to local ISP service, which is what we're talking about here.
Re: what some states would allow: absolutely. People come in at all different levels on the taxonomy of wants and needs. If you're worrying about how much radiation your phone puts out, you're not one of the farmers in the rural dakotas who was bitterly clinging to his AMPS phone unti the day service ended, because that was the only thing he could count on to have service when he was 3 hills over the horizon and there was a bad accident in the field.
Any farmer would gladly trade "NO I FUCKING MEAN IT" levels of radiation, at least in emergency situations, if it was the difference between completing or not completing the call. That's something that just doesn't weigh on the minds of phone regulators in DC because they haven't been there.
If there are people who are willing to pay for a super-handset that can be used in all 50 states despite diverse laws and regulations, and there are not local government obstacles to building/selling such a device, somebody will make it.
As far as owning parts of the spectrum and FCC involvement: I'm not convinced the current way this works is optimal, but I'm not well read enough on it to suggest one of the superior-sounding alternatives I came across.
It's impossible for me to fellate myself, and worse than there being only one organization I can go to to receive this service, there is NO organization in my area that can do this for me.
Presumably, the government should step in and regulate/provide this service for me.
Is that accurate? Or do I misunderstand you?
You're absolutely right that I rely on your labor for the wonderful standard of living that I have. Thank you.
You're absolutely wrong that I have _coerced you_ into providing it. If you feel that I haven't compensated you for everything you've ever done for me, I apologize, and I'd like to talk so we can resolve this.
People can and do cooperate and build off of the labor of each other while still engaging in purely voluntary transactions.
That is the sole ethical model of human interaction - voluntaryism.
For any other model of interaction, there is an element of coercion involved. There's a hidden gun just around the corner.
Your point about the _practice_ of those who are recognized to be slaves vs. how most of us live is of course accurate.
But the frustrating thing about libertarians is that we are not pragmatists, we deal in principle and ideology. Someone who is held against their will, made to do tasks they do not wash to do, and who is only beaten or raped once a year certainly has it better than someone who is held against their will, made to do tasks they do not wish to do, but who is raped every hour.
We agree that both are slaves, even though their treatment and perhaps the magnitude of their suffering differs.
So then, what is the essential nature of slavery?
http://www.duke.edu/web/philsociety/taleofslave.html
What's your answer to the question of "the tale of the slave?"
What makes us not slaves? The infrequency of our rapes?
Incidentally, if you are curious about one an-cap viewpoint on the ethics of parenting and children, of course, Murray Rothbard's "The Ethics of Liberty" is a fantastic starting point. You can find the text online.
I hope you'll take the time to read and think about the link provided. Please also note that I did not denigrate you or your beleifs in my response, a courtesy you did not grant to the OP.
That really raises my opinion of him, if what you're saying is accurate.
However, your assessment disagrees quite strongly with what I've read about him.
Disclosure: I'm somewhere between a libertarian and voluntaryist, and I'm against net neutrality laws/regulations.
But I'm happy to see this for a few reasons.
1) the idea of federal supremecy really rubs me the wrong way. States and municipalities, so long as they are not violating incorporated individual protections, should do whatever they like and tell uncle sam to fuck off. This idea that every single detail of our lives has to be managed from DC and has to be the same for everybody everywhere is really, really stupid and is very counter to the original vision of America.
2) If some people want something like net neutrality specifically, not doing it at the federal level is a great approach
2a) I don't think the FCC really has any constitutional right to exist, but that ship sailed a long time ago. The idea that it has the power to impose and enforce net neutrality regulatoins is dubious at best.
2b) I don't see that _all_ internet businesses eveyrwhere should play by arbitrary rules decided in DC. You could certainly envision high-density municipal internet services being provisiioned, used, and regulated differently than RRTA farmers in the dakotas. Let's let the people decide what they want at a _local_ level, and make businesses put up with it.
2c) incidentally, having different rules and regulatinos for every little locality PROMOTES small businesses and regional operators, and dissuades mega-corps who want to push out local incumbents with federal power
Now, I used to live in seattle and hated the politics of that whole festering sore of hippie socialists. But, I long for the idea that their right of supreme self-determination should trump and invalidate whatever Uncle Sam has to say about it.
I recognize all of the rights of mealworms which they fought and secured for themselves by defeating the British.
That is to say, none.
When they make a convicing argument that they have rights and when they are able to assert themselves to that end, I'll listen.
The reason I don't _personally_ torture animals that appear to have more in common with me than other life (like the grass in my yard, which i mow with reluctant impunity) is because I don't feel good doing it, and the Tale of the Jewish Zombie (aka the Bible) tells me I am to be a proper steward of the life God has put on the Earth.
But absent some external moral standard (like a religious beleif), I find nothing compelling to suggest that non-humans have any "rights" at all.
Unpopular as it is, I'd advocate for the repeal of _all_ animal "cruelty" laws. The purpose of government is to allegedly protect the rights of individuals; animals don't have rights, therefore, the extent to which the law discusses animals should be limited to _property crime_ issues.
I understand that makes me a "speciesist". I'm fine with that, and as I've illustrated above, I have religious and non-religious arguments for why I'm ok with that.
If Michael Vick tortures _your_ dog, he should go to jail for destruction of your property. If he tortures _his_ dog, he's just a neighbor with a habit I find disgusting.
I am a Microsoft employee in DevDiv.
(PS: Buy Visual Studio LightSwitch when it comes out! It rocks!)
I will not comment on the accuracy of what is in the ars article, other than to say: I know the answers to some of the questions they are worried about, and the answers do not worry me and shouldn't worry you either (unless you're a competing non-MS technology, perhaps :))
Regarding your post: I don't see how you'd conclude that .net is going anywhere from the article you supposedly read.
First and foremost, you would need to be specific about what you mean by ".net" for your statement to even make sense. Are you claiming that C#, the language, is on an EOL path? Or the .NET runtime will no longer be a supported way of writing userland apps?
Your claim that we intentionally obsolete developer technologies as some sort of money making scheme is hillarious. Have you worked in the commercial software industry before? Let me explain how it works.
1) we spend a ginormous amount of money paying engineers to make something that we hope developers use.
2) we figure out if its something we can even charge money for, or if we need to give it away so more people will develop for our huge money making platforms (Windows, SQL, Office, Sharepoint)
3) when we have something we can give away / sell for a pittance, we start doing so
4) this is when we might actually start getting money for our efforts.
Now then, if our strategy was to make money at any cost, you'd think that we'd fire all of the engineers and keep selling licenses at the same price indefinitely.
But as you've noted, our engineering staff moves on to new things and eventually the old things get phased out.
We don't start working on new platforms because we need to figure out how to get more money out of existing customers. We work on new platforms because we think they'll be better than the old ones; that customers will like them more; that they'll provide more value to everyone. There are all kinds of features and products we'd LIKE to put out there in the real world but they all cost us more money to do. And as you've noted, everything we release causes someone to get upset if we want to stop supporting years later. For every one of these developer technologies we ship, we end up supporting it for years after we're not selling it (and thus not getting new revenue). Our support life cycle is a hell of a lot longer than Apples, or any of the for-pay Linux distros, for instance.
Finally, regarding what a huge revenue stream deveopers tools are for us... I've never come across anyone in Windows or Office who is worried their project is going to be killed and their staff moved onto a _real_ money making project like the F# compiler :)
Sure, DevDiv does great revenue compared to a lot of entire companies. But look who we're competing against. I'm not sure we've ever sold 300 million seats ever, counting everything we do. Windows does that _every release_.
(nothing against the F# compiler guys. I just picked something :))
I claimed that _I_ was happy with the care my family has received. Are you going to tell me I was wrong or lying when I said that? Really?
I also claimed that premature infants receive better care (and outcomes) in the US than in other countries. Are you going to attempt to contradict that?
Your points about me already bankrolling everyone else's care are roughly accurate. Which is I why I proposed ending walkin ER care. I'm tired of paying what I already do, and I don't want you making it worse.
Turning away people who cannot pay would be JUST, not evil. If people want charity, they should go to church and make great friends. If they want to steal from me, they better have plenty of guns -- like the government does.
I'm not forcing you to do anything.
Calling someone an asshole isn't helpful. I'm telling you that you're evil so we can have a discussion about your principles and values (which you seem to lack). Happily supporting the financial slavery of your neighbors is, I would say, evil. Since you appear to support just that, I'd say my criticisms are not hyperbole nor insult; they are an accusation you are welcome to refute.
Also, its very tiring to hear about how fox news and corporations are controlling me. I don't even have a TV, and my opinions of what powers corporations should have probably aren't going to win me any friends amongst corporatist America.
You are _assuming_ or _casting_ viewpoints and motivations on me which are incorrect.
It's very easy for me to explain why i prefer the curent system to a more socialized one. I'll break it down for you.
In any system of health care, there will be rationing; the needs of the ill will always be greater than the supply of care. How should the available care then be distributed?
Personally, I think it should be distributed to those who are willing to pay for it. Like me. Now, unfortuneately, we have all of this government and insurance nonsense screwing all of that up, so what I want only exists in certain corners of the overall health marketplace. Never-the-less, I've been satisfied thus far with my treatment.
However, with a move to "universal care" or greater government involvement, the rationing function tends to be less dominated by my money and more dominated by government bullshit or other arbitrary metrics. And I don't like that because it is coercive, it is arbitrary, and it punishes virtue and value instead of rewarding it.
Let me be perfectly clear: its not "his" fault if a guy breaks his leg and loses his job and has no insurance.
But isn't my fault either. And its not his former employers fault, it's not your fault, its not "the governments fault", etc etc.
As heartless as it is, the least amount of aggregate evil in society is when we dont steal from EVERYBODY to help one guy who had hard luck. Stealing is still stealing, even when millions of neighbors agree that its a fine thing to do. They're wrong. You're wrong.
But I've been down this road with you before. You have no principles, so you refuse to understand what I am saying. You think its fine for the government to go around assassinating people; you naturally think widespread theft is fine.
Don't ever talk to anyone about ethics or morality again until you can explain why stealing from me to pay for your care is just. I don't care if that's what's already happening some of the time. If you want to support the growth or solidification of that tenet of how health care should be distributed, the onus is on _you_ to justify the morailty of it.
Start with some principles and make an argument -- calling me an ignorant asshole over and over doesn't impress anyone.
before claiming i am ignorant you should, at minimum, cite at least one thing i've claimed that is inaccurate.
I don't doubt that there are many people in the US who are unhappy with what they are receiving and what they are paying. But I'm not one of them. You plan on making me suffer further on account of someone else. That's because you're evil.
You have simply insulted me, over and over. I've made some claims about you that aren't necessarily insulting, although if someone said them about me, i'd be insulted. But you haven't addressed or attempted to refute them.
you cannot talk about ethics or principles without even stating what yours are, much less demonstrating any at any point.
I also don't see how my statement regarding a preference for principles over outcomes reflects brainwashing or stupidity. Perhaps you could explain it? Or is it the case that you are too busy typing "asshole" to think about what I might have meant?
My health care is kick ass and I've never had a problem with it. I've never had to wait to get whatever I like.
When my twins were born at 26 weeks I was very happy to be in the USA where even my small town of 100,000 people has a level 3 NICU.. and note that despite the CDC paper about infant mortality in the USA, _premature babies_ in the USA have better outcomes than anywhere else.
It's all very well and good for the Danish that you claim they are happy and pay less. Like I said - move there if you find it superior. It should be a pareto improvement for both of us: you get what you want, I get what I want (freedom from your bullshit)
Naturally, you don't address any of my points about ethics vs. consequentialism. The measure of "live longer and pay less" is not only problematic but is frankly irrelevant.
I am not ultimately concerned with metrics or outcomes, I am concerned with principles and ethics. Based on this and our previous interactions, you have none and so you find this difficult to understand.
Have you ever met a libertarian who has done this? Who has tried to receive "free" emergency room care?
I never have.
I've actually been to denmark. Have you? _I_ wasn't happier there.
You can move to Denmark if you want to. Why are you insistent on fucking up _here_ ? If there is already a place that you like more than here, why not go there?
For me, there IS no place I'd rather be. People like you are making here worse _all the time_. Please stop!
Now then, there is a very simple answer to the freeloader problem: stop providing ER care. Yes, I am absolutely fine if there is no law requireing ER's to treat people. If you believe that people will just lay on the street dying, so be it. I'm fine with that to. I don't think that's what will actually happen, but I feel that is a more just outcome than what you are proposing.
All Compulsion is always evil, all of the time. You obviously disagree, but we should just be clear about the roots of our disagreement. I beleive voluntaryism is the only ethical approach, and the consequences of that are what they are. You beleive that if some particular outcome is desirable, it is fine to abandon any principle in pursuit of that.
I'm an idealist; you're a pragmatic murderer.